Virgil – The Aeneid

Translation: ‘I sing of arms and of the man, fated to be an exile, who long since left the land of Troy and came to Italy to the shores of Lavinium; and a great pounding he took by land and sea at the hands of the heavenly gods because of the fierce and unforgetting anger of Juno. Great too were his sufferings in war before he could found his city and carry his gods to Latium. This was the beginning of the Latin race, the Alban fathers and the high walls of Rome.’

arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram, multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem inferretque deos Latio; genus unde Latinum Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae.

Aeneid I.1-7

Why was it written?

What was the epic about?

Why has this poem endured for over 2000 years?

Why is it probably the most interesting book you will read on this course?

‘I sing of arms and of the man, fated to be an exile, who long since left the land of Troy and came to Italy to the shores of Lavinium; and a great pounding he took by land and sea at the hands of the heavenly gods because of the fierce and unforgetting anger of Juno. Great too were his sufferings in war before he could found his city and carry his gods to Latium. This was the beginning of the Latin race, the Alban fathers and the high walls of Rome.’

A Roman representation of the flight of Aeneas and surviving family from Troy

Statue of Roman aristocrat with wax portraits of ancestors c. 90 BCE

Aeneas as stoic Roman

Then, as they mourned, he comforted them, saying: ‘My friends, this is not the first trouble we have known. We have suffered worse before, and this too will pass. God will see to it. You have been to Scylla’s cave and heard the mad dogs howling in the depths of it. You have even survived rocks thrown by the Cyclops. So summon up your courage once again. This is no time for gloom or fear. The day will come, perhaps, when it will give you pleasure to remember even this. Whatever chance may bring, however many hardships we suffer, we are making for Latium, where the Fates show us our place of rest. There it is the will of God that the kingdom of Troy shall rise again. Your task is to endure and save yourselves for better days.’ These were his words, but he was sick with all his cares. He showed them the face of hope and kept his misery deep in his heart. I.198-209

Dido in Love

Sometimes she would take Aeneas through the middle of Carthage, showing him the wealth of Sidon and the city waiting for him, and she would be on the point of speaking her mind to him but checked the words on her lips. Sometimes, as the day was ending, she would call for more feasting and ask in her infatuation to hear once more about the sufferings of Troy and once more she would hang on his lips as he told the story. Then, after they had parted, when the fading moon was dimming her light and the setting stars seemed to speak of sleep, alone and wretched in her empty house she would cling to the couch Aeneas had left. IV.75-83.

Saviour of Rome

As Anchises reports to Aeneas

‘Here is the man whose coming you so often hear prophesied, here he is, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, the man who will bring back the golden years to the fields of Latium once ruled over by Saturn, and extend Rome’s empire beyond the Indians and the Garamantes to a land beyond the stars, beyond the yearly path of the sun.’ VI. 788-794

The ‘Prima Porta’ statue of Augustus (Octavian) as it would have appeared to the ancient Romans c. 20 BCE

Roman Destiny

‘Others, I do not doubt it, will beat bronze into figures that breathe more softly. Others will draw living likenesses out of marble. Others will plead cases better or describe with their rod the courses of the stars across the sky and predict their risings. Your task, Roman, and do not forget it, will be to govern the peoples of the world in your empire. These will be your arts—and to impose a settled pattern upon peace, to pardon the defeated and war[e] down the proud.’ VI.849-853

Latium where Aeneas and his allies fought the Italians under Turnus and where Rome was to be established in the future.

Aeneas feasted his eyes on the sight of this spoil, this reminder of his own wild grief, then, burning with mad passion and terrible in his wrath, he cried: ‘Are you to escape me now, wearing the spoils stripped from the body of those I loved? By this wound which I now give, it is Pallas who makes sacrifice of you. It is Pallas who exacts the penalty in your guilty blood.’ Blazing with rage, he plunged the steel full into his enemy’s breast. The limbs of Turnus were dissolved in cold and his life left him with a groan, fleeing in anger down to the shades.

The Aeneid – a summary

• Marks the maturity of Latin literature

• A multi-layered work in traditional epic style

• Celebrates what it is to be Roman

• Acknowledges the importance of the gods and destiny

• Informed mainly by Stoic philosophy

• Gave Rome a mythological hero equal to the heroes of Homer

• By imitating Homeric tradition Virgil validated and reinforced the legendary links of Rome to Troy